Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 849 other followers

No, He’s Not Hitler—Yet. Trumpism is not Fascism—Yet. And while 63 MILLION AMERICANS voted for this guy, that is only 27 Percent of the voting-eligible population. There is plenty of resistance out there to make sure he doesn’t become Hitler and we don’t succumb to neo-fascism. Let’s get to work.

In a live interview with TODAY's Savannah Guthrie, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of British-based company Cambridge Analytica, says the company misused personal Facebook data of some 50 million people to help influence the 2016 presidential election. Wylie says the company met with former Trump campaign manager (and current outside adviser) Corey […]

Marine life is battling an unexpected enemy, lost fishing gear, also known as ghost gear. 705,000 tons of fishing gear are lost in the ocean every year. Mike Neill and his crew are trying to change that.

Do states have a moral right to exclude people from their territory? It might seem obvious that states do have such a right, but Sarah Fine questions this in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can su […]

How do I know I'm not dreaming? This sort of question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years. Eric Schwitzgebel discusses scepticism and its history with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at D […]

What is a robustly demanding good, and what has that got to do with friendship and love? Find out in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast in which Nigel Warburton interviews Princeton Professor Philip Pettit about this topic.

Philosophers talk about 'knowing how' and 'knowing what'. But what is involved in knowing a person? Katalin Farkas discusses this question with David Edmonds in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University.

Are human beings fundamentally different from the rest of the animal world? Can what we essentially are be captured in a biological or evolutionary description? Roger Scruton discusses the nature of human nature with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

The Hard Problem of consciousness is the difficulty of reconciling experience with materialism. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, in conversation with Nigel Warburton, Anil Seth, a neuroscientist, explains his alternative approach to consciousness,which he labels the 'Real Problem. Anil is a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow.

Why does apparently trivial ritual play such an important part in some ancient Chinese philosophy? Michael Puett, co-author of The Path, explains in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can subscribe to […]

What is Art? That's not an easy question to answer. Some philosophers even think it can't be answered. Aaron Meskin discusses this question on this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites […]

The process of dying can be horrible for many, but is there anything bad about death itself? The obvious answer is that deprives us of something that we might otherwise have experienced. But that leads to further philosophical issues...Shelly Kagan discusses some of these with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

We certainly disagree about aesthetic judgments in a range of cases. But is anyone right? Is there no disputing about taste? Are all tastes equal? Elisabeth Schellekens Damman discusses disagreement about taste in this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collabo […]

Cobalt used to be a byproduct of copper mining, used in everyday, boring stuff like tires and magnets. Now it's one of the most important and sought after metals on the periodic table. This has implications for big tech firms like Apple.

Good Luck, Ted!

“There are people who wonder if faith is real. I can tell you, in my family there’s not a second of doubt…”

—Ted Cruz, speaking today at Liberty University.

Just after midnight, Ted Cruz of Texas released a video announcing he is running for the presidency of the United States, also known, among evangelicals, as the the Theocrat-in-Chief.

I wish him a limited amount of luck, hoping against hope that he can pull off a Moses-like miracle, one that would have the Almighty part a Red Sea of sanity long enough to allow Cruz and his zealots to get to the promised land of the GOP nomination.

If ever there were someone perfectly equipped to lead a Christian jihad, a Holy War against Islam abroad and against secularism here at home, it would be Ted Cruz. And to prove it, he kicked off his campaign today by giving a speech at Liberty University, which was founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell and boasts that it is “the largest Christian university in the world.” Its mission is “to develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge, and skills essential for impacting tomorrow’s world.” And then there is this:

With a unique heritage and an ever-expanding influence, Liberty remains steadfast in its commitment of Training Champions for Christ.

No doubt, Cruz will enlist a lot of those champions for service in his crusade campaign (he had a weird moment where he asked the students to text “Constitution” to a campaign number). At one point in his speech in Lynchburg, Virginia, this morning he said:

Today, roughly half of born again Christians aren’t voting. They’re staying home. Imagine instead millions of people of faith all across America coming out to the polls and voting our values.

Yes. Just imagine.

Putting President Ted Cruz in charge of a the U.S. military would mean that Allah-fearing Americans could prove, once and for all, that our God is bigger than their God, something, apparently, that God has had trouble proving on his own. And as president, with an evangelical-fueled Congress and five willing souls on the Supreme Court, Cruz could turn America back into the theocratic state that our Founders meant it to be.

Cruz explained our divine birth as a nation:

What is the promise of America? The idea that—the revolutionary idea—that this country was founded upon, which is that our rights don’t come from man. They come from God Almighty.

Admittedly, there are lots of Americans who believe that, even people who would never vote for Ted Cruz. But it means something intensely personal to evangelicals. It means America is right and everyone else is on the wrong side of God. Cruz mused:

Imagine a president who says, “We will stand up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.” And “We will call it by its name. We will defend the United States of America.”

Needless to say, that enlivened the young Christian crowd. As did dropping Ronald Reagan’s name in a dubious accounting of recent history:

Imagine it’s 1979 and you and I were listening to Ronald Reagan. And he was telling us that we would cut the top marginal tax rates from 70% all the way down to 28%. That we would go from crushing stagnation to booming economic growth to millions being lifted out of poverty and into prosperity and abundance. That the very day he was sworn in our hostages who were languishing in Iran would be released. And that within a decade we would win the Cold War and tear the Berlin Wall to the ground. That would have seemed unimaginable. And yet, with the grace of God, that’s exactly what happened.

It’s important for those of you who don’t understand the evangelical mind to know that that phrase, “with the grace of God,” is not just some rhetorical flavoring of a speech meant for a receptive audience. Cruz literally means to say that God had a hand in the election of Ronald Reagan and the lowering of marginal tax rates and the freedom for those Muslim-held hostages and the end of the Soviet Union. He means it because he knows who is watching over us:

From the dawn of this country, at every stage America has enjoyed God’s providential blessing.

I am hoping that at least one person in the audience, in the “university” audience, stopped to wonder: “If America has always enjoyed God’s providential blessing, shouldn’t we thank him for giving us Barack Obama, who has helped get us out of a very deep and dark Republican-engineered recession and who killed Osama bin Laden and who is at this very moment dropping bombs on the enemies of Christianity?”

In any case, Cruz continued:

God’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation. And I believe God isn’t done with America yet. I believe in you, I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America. And that is why today I am announcing that I am running for President of the United States. It is a time for Truth. It is a time for liberty. It is a time to reclaim the Constitution of the United States.

Again, one has to wonder if there was anyone in the crowd who scratched his or her head and asked: “If God has been so protective over America, how did things get so messed up that we lost the Truth and our liberty and, uh, our Constitution?”

None of it makes any sense, of course. And the Canadian-born Ted Cruz will not get to lead his American revival. But if there is a God who does watch over this country, then he will engineer victory after victory for Cruz in the Republican primaries and help him get the nomination. That way, we are guaranteed that a Democrat will once again win the White House and capture the Senate and, if God is really, really good to us, win back the House of Representatives.

2 Comments

Troy

You captured the essence of faith here, Duane. Ted Cruz appears to be channeling Elmer Gantry. The patter sounds good and it works, but only if the crucial element of faith is present, i.e., lack of doubt. Not much doubt at Liberty U., so I can understand Ted’s choice there.

Doubt is the enemy of faith. As soon as one begins to doubt, to ask questions, to want evidence, to posit alternatives, the thing begins to crumble. The early church sought to stamp out doubt through the Inquisition. It worked overtly, but doubt is infectious. As soon as the first seed is planted, it grows in the mind. Next thing you know, the masters of control all got trouble and the king is seen in his birthday suit.